The Chipmunk Tightrope

A few days ago, Eli was paging through a new nature book Theo got for his birthday. This book has general information about a variety of animals and insects you might find in a backyard or nearby woods. It also includes a few projects. Eli became enamored of the 'chipmunk tightrope'. It just so happens that a chipmunk has a hole right outside our back door. So today we strung a rope across the back yard at about my hip height. Then we dangled peanuts in the shell from strings that hang down about 5 inches. In theory, this is supposed to entice the curious chipmunk out across the tightrope and we can watch him try to get at the nuts. Once we constructed it, we hunkered down in the porch and watched. And watched. Our chipmunk is either on vacation or afraid of heights. So far this little rodent has not been enticed. But I have to admit, it was a very enjoyable piece of parenting. What I love the most is their confidence that the chipmunk will show, will take the bait, and what's more, we will be there to witness it. And then, they will train it to do other tricks. Watching them with their bright eyes and easy smiles, I believe. The boys are in bed, but I'm off to check the tightrope.

Sweet Poems

Today my first grader recited this poem at his classroom Poetry Reading:
Bubble, a beautiful
Sphere of soap
Floating higher and higher
Then it snaps
Glistens
And disappears

I loved it. Even got a little teary-eyed. Not to be outdone, his soon to be kindergartner brother composed this on the way home, as we walked through the rain:
A shimmering tear from the sky-
Hits the ground, and it disappears.

I wanted to scoop the boys up and tuck them into my heart to keep them just like this forever.

And that one is up...

Yesterday's high winds and heat made me hope for one of those crackling summer storms- even though it is only early May. I love it when the weather gets a little wild. But I don't love it when that wildness knocks down old old trees. About 3 years ago I was driving with two year old Theo in the back seat through a neighborhood nearby just after one of those storms. We came to a block that was littered with downed trees and branches. It hurt my heart. I must have gasped and said, "Oh Theo, look at all of these trees that were blown down." There was silence for a while, and I imagined that he was sharing my grief- which was quite real and present for me. And then his little voice popped up, "But look Mom, that one is up, and that one is up....that one is up, and that one....and that one is up..." He literally kept up this chorus for 5 full minutes. By the end of his recitation I had begun to be convinced that the toppling of those few trees, in that one section of town, shouldn't get me so down. I also realized that given his perspective from his car seat, he probably couldn't even see the downed trees! But now that he is 5 and his head pops up above the window he keeps the same attitude. He is a wonderful partner to go through this life with!

One more shell story (kind of)

Back when Eli was five he was given the mightily responsible task of caring for the neighbor's hermit crabs while they were on vacation. I was filled with dread because when I was about five we sent our fish off to a sitter and they came back dead. Floating. I figured that it must be harder to kill a hermit crab, and if we did, it might go unnoticed for a while anyway and we could escape the blame. So they came over. And the two boys spent really quite a bit of time staring into the cage and watching them do just about nothing. Every now and then a crab would flash a bit of leg, then close back up into it's shell.

By dinnertime, it looked like the honeymoon was over. Hermit crabs are not exciting pets. The boys seemed to have completely forgotten our houseguests- which was fine, it's not like they are demanding pets either. But several hours later, when I thought the boys were in the tub, I met two naked dripping boys tiptoeing down the stairs. I asked where they were going, and Eli said, "We are off to observe the nocturnal habits of the hermit crabs!" Great, but why naked?

The Shell

A few months back I was driving with Theo down to the Science Museum. We were on our way to the Collector's Corner. This is a fabulous little spot in the museum where kids can bring in any kind of natural artifact that they find. The more they tell the attendent about the item, the more points they score. They can use those points to trade for different items in the collections. We often go in with some mangy old bone found out in the woods and come home with a polished agate or shell. I love this place! So we're driving down there and Theo has in his hands a shell that his Uncle Tim had given him. He is sitting alone in the back seat with the shell up to his ear and he says, “The shell just whispered to me the story of the last days of its life”. I said something like, "Oh, it’s telling you the story of its life?" And he says, “Oh mom, it would take many of your lifetimes for it to tell you the story of its whole life!” He also told me that he could smell the sand, and that he was listening to the shell’s story with his “eyes that are for listening to sounds” which are his ears…. It was all quite lovely. He then quietly retold this story to the Collector's Corner attendant. I think she teared up, and then awarded him thousands and thousands of points.

A Really Good Idea

Last Saturday we held our youngest son's 5th birthday party. He had a few friends over and everything went well until Theo was about to take a bite of cake and suddenly grabbed his side and began moaning. I immediatly went for a bucket, because that's what I do around stomach pain. I'm actually quite neurotic about this. But this didn't appear to be a classic case of the stomach flu. Theo was quickly incapacitated by intense abdominal cramping. By the time his friends were being picked up by (worried) parents, Theo was glassy-eyed and moaning on the couch.
Within an hour he was begging us to do something, anything to stop the pain. We called the doctor and she told us that you don't want to mess with an appendix issue, so it was best to head to the ER and get it checked out.
We did. He was admitted and x-rayed, which revealed that he was chock full of feces. I mean it looked like it was up to his neck. Throughout this whole process the only sound Theo made were small moans, and for the x-ray we practically had to use a car-jack to wratchit him out of the fetal position.
He was eventually administered an enema and we were told to encourage him to hold it as long as he could. I asked if we were talking minutes, hours, what? The nurse smiled and said, "You'll know." We did. After about 41 seconds Theo told us that he needed to go. Luckily there was a bathroom attached to the room we were in and we tossed him onto the pot in the nick of time. Just as the rear end let loose, so did a torrent of thoughts, desires, questions, and comments come out of his mouth. He could not stop talking. Jon said, "Sheesh, I didn't think these enemas were supposed to work on both ends!" We were both just thrilled to see him acting more like himself. When the doctor poked her head into our room and asked how things were going, Theo piped up from in the bathroom, "This was a REALLY good idea!" We all agreed.

Working the late shift at the SageMart

Back when Jon and I first got married and combined our names to become the Sage-Martinson family, we didn't really know what we were doing. We knew others had hyphenated before us, but no one told us about the tedious, mind-numbing delays this little symbol would cause us. We didn't realize that most government agency computers were not up to speed and ready for the hyphen. We didn't know that before long we'd be using our long, tedious name in various formats for the 1, 372 usernames that come with being a citizen of this electronic age. For our first email address we tried to shorten it down and lose the hyphen. We became: sagemart@something.com. A friend emailed us and said, "Everytime I send a message to your address I think that a 'SageMart' sure sounded like a place you should be able to buy wisdom." The tone of this message made me think that this particular friend had never encountered any type of enlightenment in a reply from our particular SageMart. Frankly, I doubt many ever have, or ever will, but her comment did conjure up an image of an old run down market at the edge of the (virtual) town, where, if you waited in line long enough, a little nugget of wisdom might come your way. It changed my attitude about our name. And ever since I've been hopefully waiting for wisdom to fill the shelves here at the SageMart, so we can really get down to the business of growing ever more wise and sage-like. So far the stock has been perenially low, and I always feel like I'm working the late shift, with nary a customer in sight. I thought that perhaps after we increased the world-wide population of Sage-Martinsons by 100% by having two boys, I had an ensured customer base. But more often than not, they are the clerks, and my husband and I are at the late-night drive-up window receiving a small package of wisdom from the mouths of our boys.